Screenwriter, director, playwright, composer-lyricist; feature film writing credits include The Lucky Ones and History of the World in 8 Minutes.

About

Photo by Tom Sewell

As a veteran screenwriter, playwright, director, and screenplay professor at Columbia, NYU/Tisch, and The New School, I offer writers, producers, directors, and financiers over three decades of professional experience in script consultancy, advising, and consulting on all aspects of script-to-screen or play-to-stage. I never intended to be an expert in narratives—but after writing professionally, original and commissioned screenplays and plays nearly my entire life, while teaching the art of film-script-making at the top university film and screenplay programs in the world, advising/teaching/guiding 30-40 student screen stories a week, every week, for nearly two decades—I have become an expert. I’m not always right. No one is. But I have developed an uncanny ability to discern the strengths and weaknesses of nearly any narrative form (especially film, TV and theater) and the ability to communicate what I’ve found. In an almost mechanical engineering manner I can comprehend and pinpoint the energetic problems—where it leaks, where it dips, where it flows—and determine what is needed to solve and improve each issue structurally, character-wise, plot-wise, timing-wise, theme-wise and/or all the above and, sometimes, none of it.Each story is a unique conversation with another (and hopefully, many many others). Like all conversations, they are tailored slightly differently for different listeners. We speak differently if we are communicating with our parents then with our children or our peers. In each case we first strive to satisfy the basics: 1. Can our viewers/readers follow our narrative, its logic, motivations and plot? and 2. Are they entertained, meaning are they compelled to take our narrative journey?

Theater: The Presidents (Co-Playwright with Ron Nessen), PBS, U.S. National Tour (2002-2003); Sunday’s Child and Men in the Kitchen (playwright), Long Wharf Theater, CT; A Subject of Childhood (playwright), W.P.A. Theater, NYC; City Muzik (Book, Music, Lyrics) Huntington Theater, Boston; Gangs (Book, Music, Lyrics), produced by David Merrick and Joe Roth.Numerous poems published including in The Paris Review and Rolling Stone. Mr. Caplin teaches screenwriting and/or script analysis at Columbia University, The Tisch Department of Dramatic Writing at NYU and The New School. He lives in NYC with his wife, a painter, Jenne van Eeghen.For more information see: LorenPaulCaplin.com